A Colorado Appeals Court judge has resigned her position after a discipline review panel recommended her removal, alleging three judicial code violations including referring to a fellow judge as “the little Mexican” in an email.

Judge Laurie Booras will step down Jan. 31, according to a letter she sent earlier this month to Colorado Supreme Court Justice Nathan B. Coats.

On Thursday afternoon, the Denver Post obtained a copy of Booras’ Jan. 2 letter to Coats and a second letter dated Dec. 17 to the Colorado Supreme Court from the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline, which recommended Booras’ removal from office.

Despite Booras’ resignation, the Colorado Supreme Court could formally remove her from office, said Rob McCallum, spokesman for the Colorado State Court Administrator’s Office.

But Booras’ removal would be overly harsh because it would be a sanction associated with a conviction of a felony or a crime of moral turpitude, “neither of which happened here,” her attorneys argued in a Monday brief to the Colorado Supreme Court.

The state Supreme Court suspended Booras with pay on March 30, shortly after The Denver Post reported a long list of allegations raised by a man claiming to be her former lover, John Sakowicz of California. He said after he ended a 10-year affair with the judge that she stalked him, including sending their love emails to his wife.

The supreme court, acting with approval of all seven justices, appointed three judges to serve as special masters to oversee the commission’s investigation: 19th Judicial District Judge James F. Hartmann Jr., 12th Judicial District Judge Pattie P. Swift and Senior Judge Gregory J. Hobbs.

The judges unanimously determined Booras violated three canons of the Code of Judicial Conduct and asked the Colorado Supreme Court to assess Booras $5,442 to cover the costs of a lengthy investigation and a hearing carried out in secret.

Booras, appointed to the appeals court in 2009, had admitted sending three offending emails to Sakowicz but claimed they were private and protected by the First Amendment.

When she referred to her ex-husband’s wife, who is Native American, as “the squaw,” she violated a canon that judges should avoid impropriety and instill confidence in their impartiality, the three judges found.

When she wrote two racial comments in a Feb. 22, 2017 email, including referring to fellow Appeals Court Judge Terry Fox, a Latina, as “the little Mexican,” it violated a canon forbidding judges from activities that undermine their integrity, independence or impartiality, the panel determined.

Fox testified at a hearing that she felt “sub-human” when she learned her trusted colleague had referred to her as “a little Mexican.”

“She provided powerful, compelling testimony about how she had to overcome obstacles her entire life due to the prejudice of others, yet she never expected to be subjected to racist remarks from a fellow judge on the Court of Appeals,” the three judges wrote in a findings document.

Booras wrote an apology letter to Fox on June 18 saying she, “did not intend to hurt you and I understand my words likely did…There is no justification for using the phrase,” according to the document.

“Nonetheless, words are the art of an appellate judge who is trained to consider what she is writing before she sends off a written communication containing them,” the review judges wrote.

Booras irreparably damaged her working relationship not only with Fox, but very likely with the other judges on the appeals court, they wrote.

Booras violated a third canon prohibiting judges from disclosing judicial matters outside court when she disclosed which way she would be ruling on a case four weeks before doing so, the review judges concluded.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.

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